“Exactly.” She points to a strip of grass that rings the pond, and we settle in beneath the droopy branches of a willow. Crowds are still moving about all around us, but it feels like we are inside something, inside the tree, hidden. And safe, I think.
“Well, think about this,” I say. “Mickey sometimes has pants and no shirt, sometimes a tuxedo, magician’s robe—”
“His closet is full,” she says, settling beside me against the trunk of the tree.
“Exactly,” I say. “But Winnie the Pooh? Same as Donald, shirt and no pants. For most Pooh characters, total nudity—except Christopher Robin, but why not him? He’s no more or less human than the rest.”
“It’s like there are no rules,” she says, nodding.
“And you know what else? Goofy wears pants and shirt and vest and hat, and he’s a
dog
. Goofy can speak and drive a car; yet Pluto is
also
a dog, and he wears nothing but a collar and he barks. I mean, my God, it’s chaos.”
“Well, listen,” she says, “you know how we established that Donald spends his life pantless? Then tell me, please, why whenever he gets out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist, he blushes when it falls down? I mean, it seems like inconsistent blushing to me.”
I start laughing, and she bumps me with her shoulder, cutting her eyes at me.
I bump her back, and she bumps me, and then we stop and she is leaning against me, her brown shoulder pressed against the sleeve of my T-shirt.
“Maybe we should forget the list,” I say. “I mean, we get three hours off and we spend it running around the park? Seems dumb when our job is to run around the park.”
“Yeah.” She picks up a blade of grass and uses it to poke my leg, then tosses it away. She seems suddenly very far off again, like there is some movie playing deep inside her mind and she keeps stopping to watch it. She pulls another blade of grass and shows it to me.
“What?” I say.
“I think it’s the only real thing in the park,” she says. “Nothing else, just this.”
“You’re in the park,” I say, taking the grass from her fingers and using it to tickle her forearm. “I am, too. We’re real.”
“Nah,” she says, shaking her head. “Not even close. We’re a creation of the park. I’m a princess, remember? My life is perfect.”
“You don’t have to work here to play a part, Ella. Most people spend their whole lives doing that. I mean, you were in high school, right? Besides, it’s not all bad, the unreal part.”
“How do you mean?”
I watch the blade of grass move up and down along her arm, watch the goose bumps form under the pale hairs on her skin. “Well, like my reality, for example,” I say. “Like Cass said the other day, big job, big truck, big money. I’m all set.”
“And?”
“And that life seems as unreal to me as this place. It’s the
same
as this place, you know? Spend your life in a costume saying what you’re supposed to say.”
“So what’s real, then?”
I look at her, and her green eyes are looking right back at me. Really looking, like she is searching for something in my eyes, in my face.
“The thing you haven’t imagined yet. The thing that’s out there, that you have to go look for. The problem with this place . . . someone tried to package a dream so they could sell it. As soon as you package it, then it stops being a dream.”
“So how does that figure into your life, all that stuff with your dad?”
I shrug, putting the blade of grass into her open hand. “You asked me if I believe in magic, and I said yes, and that’s how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then leave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.”
“But what about your dad?” She looks suddenly like she can barely breathe. “Luke, what about what was
supposed
to happen?” As she says it her eyes rim up with tears.
“Ella, if it’s magic, then nothing is
supposed
to happen. And everything is. You can’t pick and choose. My dad chose for me, and it’s like some trick where you can see the wires and the mirrors and the hole cut in the floor. You know it’s fake all along.”
She nods. “Yeah, but what if you find something you really love, and it disappears? That’s magic, too, right?”
“Yeah, I think so. If you want the real magic, you take your chances. If you want the fake kind, stay here and smile at everything.”
She looks out through the branches of our tree, out at Frontierland, where right now Davy Crockett and Pinocchio are sitting on a bench in the sun sharing a hot dog. It’s a funny sight, and she does smile, the movement of her mouth making her eyes finally spill over. Her tears land on the pale skin of her forearm, rolling down toward the blade of grass, which curls in the middle of her palm.
After dinner Cassie finds me in the bathroom we all share, standing in front of the mirror in shorts and T-shirt drying my hair. One thing about this job, you end up taking about five showers a day.
“You missed dinner,” I say. “And you can guess what Mr. Forrester is going to say about Blank and Dale. I think you need to be there.”
“So, how’d you guys do today?” She stands behind me and slips her hand around me, up under my shirt.
“We got two. And I mean it, Cass. I felt kinda stupid out there dancing with myself.”
“Is that what they call it now, Billy Idol?”
“Cass . . .”
“Okay, Mr. Bossy, calm down.” She plants a row of tiny kisses along the back of my neck. “Wait,” she says, pulling back a bit. “You got
two
? Like, two columns, you mean, right?”
“No. Two as in two. Two things. But they were really
good
ones. We’re going for quality over quantity.”
She smiles at me in the mirror, over my shoulder, her hair down and falling across her eyes. But I can see something else in her face, too, something sharp.
“You are sooo lame, baby,” she whispers in my ear, then briefly bites my earlobe. “Ask me how many we found.”
“How many?” I ask as her hand travels up the middle of my chest.
“A hundred and twelve. It’s amazing. I mean, I have the organization, like what order to move around in, and Mark . . . well, what’s there to say? It’s like touring the forest with a squirrel.”
“The chipmunk and the squirrel,” I say. “Pretty hot.”
“What are you, jealous? What were you doing all afternoon, finding
two
things? What were you up to?”
“We were just talking, Cass. And you made the teams, not me.”
She turns me around to face her, and I see all over again how gorgeous she is, her hair down and loose, her eyes bright blue and alive. Really, she looks like someone from a magazine.
“I think you need to be talking to me, not her.” She slides her hands over my shoulders, her blue T-shirt lifting up over her tanned belly as she raises her arms.
“You weren’t here.”
“Is that how it works, Luke?” Her gaze falls away from my face for a moment, and she looks genuinely hurt. “You can only see what’s in front of you? Would you like me to be like that?”
I look at her, shake my head. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“I mean, I talk to Mark, but I’m not
talking
to him. I’m thinking about you, about us.”
About winning,
I think, but don’t say it. How can I? I mean, she’s right—I shouldn’t be here kissing Cassie when all I thought about all afternoon was kissing Ella. That’s not how I want it to be, not any of it. If the world is fake, then I don’t want to be fake, too.
“You’re right,” I tell her, letting my fingers move through the tips of her hair.
She smiles and slips her hand around my neck to kiss me. “Ooh, say that again,” she says, smiling as she presses her mouth to mine. We kiss, and then she moves her mouth beside my ear, whispering to me.
“Baby,” she says, “I spent the day with that dork for
us
. I am going to get us that night alone, I promise.” She reaches down for my wrist and pulls my hand up, outside the folds of her T-shirt, until my fingers are resting on the curve of her breast. “You think about that tomorrow when you’re out moving around the park, okay?”
I nod, but can’t really speak, can’t move, my fingers just lightly touching her. She kisses my neck a final time, tells me she has to meet Mark, and, as she exits the bathroom, looks back at me one last time, smiling like she’s already won.
At midnight I tell myself I’m just going for a walk or that maybe Cass will be there to meet me near the castle again, but some other part of me knows the truth, and knows it more fully when I see Ella sitting in the shadows, on our old bench. It seems now like years ago, those nights we used to sit out here and just talk. Or the night she walked off holding hands with Mark. It’s a pretty chilly night for Florida, and she’s wearing flannel pants with pictures of sushi all over them and a Red Sox T-shirt, playing her usual game of kicking off her flip-flop, then sliding it back on.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” she says. “Totally stood up.”
“Hey, you don’t win corporate promotional contests by lying around on your butt sleeping all night.”
“Gandhi said that, right?”
“I think it was Mrs. Gandhi. She was kinda pushy.”
“Like someone else I know.” She scoots over to let me sit.
“Looks like we’re going to win,” I say, letting her comment slide.
“Yeah, at our pace . . . we
could
win if the contest was extended until, say, the next millennium.”
“No, ding-dong, I meant we are going to win by default. We get the prize and don’t have to do a damn thing.”
She nods, looking off. “Hurrah,” she says.
“I know.”
We are quiet a few minutes, until she starts smiling to herself. “I had fun today,” she says. “I’m still laughing about the pants.”
I smile back at her, nudge her knee with mine. “I’m thinking Dale needs some gym socks and a farm cap.”
She laughs. “You know, they originally had an eighth dwarf, who didn’t have pants, and his name was Sleazy.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, for real. The animators drew him into the movie, then had to take him out.”
“There’s no way,” I say. “I don’t know where you heard that, but there is just no way.”
“I have it on good authority. Mark told me when I told him about that stuff we were talking about today. And he should know.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, all the air forced out of me. I thought our time under the tree was just that—
our
time, not to be shared with others. Then again, why wouldn’t she? Suddenly, I’m feeling like an idiot.
“Well,” I say, “I’m shocked.”
She looks at me and smiles. “I know. I mean what were they thinking?”
“No, it’s not that,” I tell her, almost trying to pull back my words as I say them. “I’m shocked that Mark would talk to you about anything that involves pants. He seems a little . . . delicate for that.”
Her smile disappears; her face looks flushed, even in the dim light. “Mark isn’t
gay
or something, Luke. He’s a gentleman, not climbing all over me at the breakfast table like your girlfriend does. He’s nice to me. He’s nice.”
“‘Nice,’” I say. “That sounds really thrilling.”
“He can kiss,” she says quickly, not looking at me, her eyes wet. “He’s a good kisser, Luke. That help you get the picture?”
“Yeah, that’s great,” I say, feeling like I want to sink into the bench, into the concrete beneath the bench. “Not as good as Cassie, I bet.”
“God, you are such a child. I mean, nice retaliation.”
I look down at my own feet, shaking my head. “It’s only retaliation if it hits, Ella. You don’t care what I say about Cassie. You just don’t like her, that’s all.”
“Well, Luke,” she says as she stands up to leave, “wrong again. I hope Cassie will be a little nicer to you. Enjoy your prize. And by the way . . . yeah, it hit. Right on target. Congratulations.” She turns and walks off into the dark, toward the dorm, and it’s all I can do not to jump up and follow her.
9
Ella
Some things just suck by default, like a rainy day when you’re planning a picnic, or getting the flu when you have sweet tickets to a Sox game. But other things suck in a way that you don’t expect. Like you’re just rolling along enjoying your day, your weekend, your life, and WHAM, out of the blue, major suckage. And not just the crap-I-stepped-in-gum kind of bad, but the hits-you-like-a-meteor-from-outer-space bad, and suddenly you can’t breathe or think or even remember anything before that very moment. I’ve had three moments like that in my life. The first was when Ash died. That was the worst. Like the Hale-Bopp comet just slid out of its trajectory and smashed down hard on the edge of Maine, tipping it into the ocean. The second was when my parents bailed and suddenly I was floating, not like a kid’s balloon drifting into the sky, but like one of those giant ones from the Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Like instead of being held down by a hundred volunteers dressed as elves, Snoopy is sliding up into the sky, faster and faster, until he’s just a speck in the clouds, and the TV anchors are babbling on about where it might finally make landfall and kids are crying and the head elf is being dressed down by some upper management at Macy’s. I felt like Snoopy that day, looking down on what used to be my world.
The third sucky moment was today. And it wasn’t just a moment, but a string of minor bad moments all strung together, so that they make a chain that threatens to wrap itself around my neck and strangle me. And the thing is, when I look back over today and try to tease out the various moments, I know the real answer as to why I can’t breathe can’t be found in just today but instead over the last year. Like Ash’s death was a train engine and all these cars kept getting hooked to it, sliding along the rails, going faster and faster until there wasn’t any hope of stopping it. If I look closely, I can see the cars. The orange tank car of my parents heading off to Africa. The green boxcar of leaving my house and my friends to come down to Florida, where instead of fall, they have cruise season, and to celebrate summer, they go inside and live in the air-conditioning for five months. There’s the yellow hopper car of my aunt’s house, where I practically raised her kids for four months while she got pedicures and facials and went to Botox parties. The purple boxcar of coming here and realizing that once again, I don’t quite fit in. Like everyone has the life manual and all I got was the CliffsNotes version, which gives you the major plot points but tends to skip over the important details.